A Taste of his own medicine
by Fayth3
Summary: Rose has been acting oddly and the Doctor wants to find out why.


**Taste of his own medicine.**

The Doctor glared at the TARDIS controls and wondered again exactly what was wrong with Rose.

She'd walked around with an odd expression on her face all day, half smirk, half knowing and it was starting to drive him crazy.

He'd asked her time and again what it is, what she knows or what was so damned funny, but she just gave him a condescending smile.

"It's probably nothing, don't worry."

Of course, by companion standards that means it is something and he should worry.

He is worrying.

Even more so after her very, very odd behaviour.

They had dropped onto Earth for a brief look at some ancient art and half way around fourteenth century Tripoli she stopped dead and gave him a searching look.

He paused in his ramblings about the origins of architecture and stared back at her.

"What?"

She squinted at him and then broke into a huge grin. "Ooh!" she said in understanding. "I _see_."

"See?" He was drawing a blank "See what? What do you see?"

"Never mind," Rose said with a shrug and walked by him.

He darted in front of her. "See what? You can't just leave it there, what do you see?"

Rose out her head on one side and gave him an odd look. "Nothing, doesn't matter."

Then she walked past him and off into the market place leaving him staring after her.

All day she'd given him little looks like that, out of the corner of her eye, and replied with the same negative phrase at his questioning:

"It's nothing. Probably."

Probably.

It was enough to send any man crazy and he hadn't been particularly sane to start off with.

After their long day they'd gone back to the TARDIS and settled in for some quiet time. Only Rose was acting oddly again, sitting in the console room with a paperback book and a pen.

It wasn't Heat or SFX or any of her other favourite magazines, it was a proper book and it had no cover and no title. Every now and then she'd grin madly and underline something, nodding happily.

He tried to circle around her to see what she was finding so fascinating but she angled the book so he wasn't able read it, or know what she was doing and when he asked, she simply dismissed him with an offhand. "It's nothing."

It was slowly driving him crazy.

Rose smiled to herself and he glared at her for being all unfathom-ly and un-Rose like.

They've been together for almost two years now and he thought that he knew all there was to know about Rose and yet, right now, he has no idea what's going on inside her head. It's like she's changing right in front of him.

It's baffling.

And oddly intriguing.

He sat up suddenly, wanting to get to the bottom of it and gave her his best grin. "So, Rose, what are you reading?"

"A book," she replied and his grin faltered.

"Yes, I can see that."

"If ya knew," she replied in an odd American accent, "why d'ya ask?"

The Doctor stared at her and she giggled.

"It's from Undercover Blues … never mind." She went back to her book.

Five minutes later she was till reading and ignoring him.

Rose never ignored him and he didn't like it.

He tried again. "Ro—"

"Did you know that early mythology had ancient tribes wearing skins of animals in the hopes that they took on traits of the animals that they wore. It's kind of the same way that football fans believe they'll play better if they have Beckham or Rooney on their own football shirt when they play. But the animals they chose were usually bears or wolves. When they combined all that with hallucinogenic drugs made from plants some believed that they not only had the characteristics of the animal but became the animal themselves. That's how the myth of werewolves was started."

He blinked. She'd said all that without taking a breath and she actually sounded very knowledgeable. She'd obviously been doing some reading after their encounter in 1876.

He grinned in pride. "Yes, I—"

"Things is," she interrupted, not looking at him, still lost in her book, "that it could easily have been the mythology of the beaver, or badger. Wolves had strength but you don't wanna mess with a badger when it's mad. Or a swan. Of course swans have their own mythology and that, thanks to the Greeks and their Gods weird fascination with screwing humans in animal form. I mean its weird enough to think of God's wanting to get it on with mortals but dressed as a bull? It's a wonder Hera didn't just lop Zeus's balls off to stop 'im. She had every right to be jealous if you ask me. Course the Greeks didn't exactly have fidelity in mind most of the time. That's not the point, although they did have their own things with wolves starting Rome. No, wait. That was Roman's: Romulus and Remus. The founder of Rome, not the Harry Potter character."

The Doctor's jaw was hanging somewhere around chest level at this point but Rose took a quick breath and carried on.

"Although with the rate JK Rowling is snatching mythology quotes I'll be dead surprised if he doesn't end up being some sort of founder of something. I just wish she'd get a move on and finish the last book, before the kids are too old to play the characters. Although I'd be grateful if she doesn't have Ron and Hermione get together, I mean classic signs of an abusive relationship happening there. He's always putting her down for being smart and she lets him. Daft cow. Which goes to show that you can have book smarts and still not be very clever. Where was I?"

He had no idea. "I—"

"Right, so wolves are used in all kinds of rituals and then some bright spark gets the idea to combine the myth with the poor blokes who get excessive hairy. Lycanthropy is tagged as the werewolf disease and people get locked up, killed or put on show for the crime of a blunt shaver. But there's another disease called _Congenital generalized hypertrichosis_ which meant that the entire face was covered with hair. It's an actual disorder and these guys also are victimised."

"Ros-"

"Then again there is this theory that Ergot, a fungus, can go bad, yeah, and poison whole towns with hallucinations, which is why some believe that they are or that they have seen a werewolf. Talk about mass tripping; don't explain why they've all seen the same thing though, does it? Course in our case the werewolf we saw was the result of alien tech crashing onto Earth. Makes you wonder if there was more than one meteorite that smashed into earth. I mean we know we get hit by space debris all the time, I always knew Earth was the universe's dumping ground. Can you just imagine London being some galactic rubbish tip—aliens going 'oh, It don't matter, chuck it at the Earth'. Can't wait until they get wise to recycling; it all mattered in the war ya know. My Nan was always saying they had to recycle everything. Nothing went to waste. They sliced bits off their skirts and sent old tin cans to make weapons … probably why we almost lost. Imagine it ain't too scary having a tank roll up to you with Heinz scrawled on the side. There's nothing scary about Heinz soup. Although I am hungry now. Want tea?"

She slipped the book off her knee and wandered towards the door.

The Doctor stared weakly after her. Before she could reach the door he picked up the book she had been studying and read the title. "_Psychology for dummies_."

It had nothing to do with werewolves, or whatever she had been actually talking about and he was suddenly very, very confused.

"Rose?" he managed.

She turned around, a slight smile on her face. "Yeah?"

He took a deep breath. "You've been acting weird all day, all knowing and smirk-y and saying that there is probably nothing wrong. Probably. Now you're reading books on Psychology and talking randomly at 100 miles an hour about nothing."

"Yeah?"

He threw his arms in the air in frustration. "I don't get it!"

Rose leaned against the door and folded her arms with a huge grin. "I know. Annoying isn't it?"

His jaw dropped as she turned with a giggle and walked away.


End file.
